


The Shape Of Things To Come

by nesrynfaliq



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, F/M, Lots of Angst, Poor Lucien, acomaf, alternative POV, and then some more angst, and then still more angst for good measure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 20:50:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8300570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nesrynfaliq/pseuds/nesrynfaliq
Summary: Lucien’s POV of Elain’s Making in Hybern and the separation that follows. 
Anger reared in me like wildfire again, burning so fiercely within me that I remembered, for just a moment, what I was. I was a High Lord’s son. I was a Prince of the Autumn Court. I had fire in my veins, ash powdering my soul and rage fuelling that brutal, ravaging power which I had suppressed for centuries. It came rushing from my core, flooding me without warning, without consent, rearing in me, a phoenix drawn from the cold, silent dust I had become.





	

“ _That is enough_.”

I didn’t know where the words had come from, let alone the courage to speak them out loud in this foul place. Tamlin was already on the floor at my feet, the King’s magic pinning him there, his own power useless. What could I do where my High Lord had failed? The rational part of me asked. The rational part of me had never been particularly good at winning arguments against my reckless, impulsive instincts.

I launched myself forwards, heedless of the King, the guards, the queens, the Night Court, the deadly power that I could feel stretching to every corner of the room. I had eyes only for her. For the young and terrified girl who had begun to sob as they yanked her off of her feet and began to drag her towards the waiting Cauldron. She was like Feyre, the Feyre I had first known when she had come to us and changed so much. But Elain was softer, so much softer, with her large, doe’s eyes and slender, delicate features. She was struggling and screaming in the guard’s clutches.

And I had to get to her. I had to. I _had_ to. The need that burned in me was so strong, so overwhelming that it blocked out everything else. For the first time in so long I wasn’t afraid. I had purpose. I had something to fight for. I didn’t know why I was willing to throw myself at a madman, at a monster, for her. I barely knew her. I had never met her before today and had only picked up scraps from Feyre about her. Fragments of a girl that now stood before me that I knew in some deep, innate part of myself, that I would burn the world to ashes for without a second thought.

This wasn’t supposed to be happening. It felt wrong, it felt so painfully, terribly wrong. My gut was twisting as though it had been filled with serpents, snapping and biting at my insides, making me act, making me _do_ something for once. Always I was the one who stood at the sidelines, who did nothing. The coward who turned away and pretended not to notice the things he was too scared to change. But this...I couldn’t let this happen. I couldn’t let them take her. I _wouldn’t_ let them take her.

The way my blood boiled at the sight of her being manhandled might have terrified me if I had paused to give it any thought. It wasn’t Feyre’s desperate screams that drove me. It wasn’t a calculated attempt to switch sides, to ingratiate myself with a faction that didn’t contain this harsh, brutal king that Tamlin had aligned us with. It was deeper than that. It was an instinct. Like the urge to eat or breathe. I couldn’t place it, couldn’t easily find the root of it within myself. It was just there. Natural as the heartbeat that pounded violently against my ribs in time with my own desperation.

It was making me run for her. I was going to tear those guards away from her, their grips so tight they were sure to leave bruises on her pale skin. I was going to rip their throats out for touching her that way. I was going to kill them for daring to harm her, for trying to do this to her. And then I was going to take her somewhere safe. I was going to protect her. I was going to make sure they never hurt her again. I-

The King’s magic snared me as easily as it had Tamlin. It slammed into me with the force of a wave, pressing me down onto the floor and holding me there, so tightly that I couldn’t move, could barely breathe. Could only watch as the horror before me played itself out.

Elain’s foot hit the water contained within the Cauldron and she began to scream. The sound contained nothing but terror, deep and unrestrained and I _felt_ it flare in me as well. My chest was being crushed in a vice as I started at her screaming and screaming and still trying to struggle hopelessly. I felt her panic, her horror at the thing confronting her. And I fought with her, tried to free myself from my bonds, even tried to reach for the magic I had not touched for centuries if it would help.

 But neither of us had been made to be the heroes that defied kings and toppled worlds. And she was forced further into the Cauldron even as I was held down upon the floor, my gaze flashing between the terrified woman and my irate High Lord. The look in his eyes promised the pain of retribution I had come to know well in the months Feyre had been gone from our court.

Elain’s screams filled the hall again in the moment before she was plunged beneath the black waters of the Cauldron. The memories hit me like an iron fist, slamming into me without warning, engulfing me, consuming me, ripping me from my body and making me watch again. The stain of blind horror the images left behind was worse than anything I had experienced to this point.

It was happening again.

I was held down again, powerless and hopeless, struggling blindly. I was made to watch again. I was made to look again into eyes that were so different, eyes of gold and eyes of brown, two different people, two different lives, two different worlds. But the look in them was the same. The look of fear, the plea for help that filled the eyes of those who had seen death hovering over them and still prayed for an escape even as they knew it would not come. I was made to feel as something within me was ripped at until my soul was nothing but agony, nothing but fire blazing and burning and destroying.

I slumped down to the frozen stones, trembling, squeezing my eyes closed, praying to Mother and Cauldron and whatever gods the mortals had once sought salvation from before they’d been forgotten, to anything that might hear me this time.

_Not again. Not again. Not again. Not again._

I didn’t know why this hurt me so much, why it affected me so much. I had seen death. I had watched countless faeries die since that day my father had taken my mate from me. I had even been the cause of some of them.

So I didn’t know why this of all things brought me back so sharply to that moment. I didn’t know why I would have fought and killed, unleashed the terrible consuming power I had been born with and turned my back upon centuries before to tear apart this world for this girl I barely knew. I didn’t know why it felt as though I were being ripped apart as well.

I didn’t know why I was so certain that if Elain drowned in that Cauldron I would rather die with her here and now, chained and pitiful and worthless, than continue trying to drag some existence out of this world without her in it.

I heard the Cauldron tip on its side, thudding to the floor and casting its contents across it in a great arcing wave. I lifted my head. I had to see. I had to know.

My heart hammered so quickly in my chest that it was causing a sort of hysteria to rise in me, a panic bursting in a crescendo through me making it impossible to think or breathe, of the sort I had felt only once before. On that day when I had walked into one of the assembly halls in the Autumn Court and seen the girl I loved, had proposed marriage to, sprawled on the floor covered in blood, my father’s blade pressed to her throat, waiting for me.

Elain was cast onto the tiles, face down, lying prostrate on the floor. She was slender still, delicately boned and built. It seemed impossible that she could have survived what that thing had done to her.

But she was not dead.

I knew. I knew it in my bones, in my heart, in my very soul. Because if she had been dead no chains and no leashes and no magic would have stopped me from bringing this entire castle down around us for her. The dark realisation hit me with such force and such certainty that I shied away from it, terrified. That part of me existed but I had forced it down deep, so deep...That this young woman’s death could bring it back, could make me willing to use it, could make me _want_ to use it...What was she? Who was she to me?

With a rasping cough Elain drew a shuddering breath into her new lungs. I watched her small body expand with the force of it. Then she pushed herself up, turning to find her sister, not bothering to remove the gag at her mouth. Nesta roared in outrage at the sight of her, at the faintly glowing skin, the ears that tapered to delicate points, at the infinite beauty the Cauldron had bestowed upon her that was enough to make me feel as though I had been struck by the King’s power again. The Cauldron had turned her into what she despised and feared most in this world. It had made her into a creature like me. It had made her Fae.

Something snapped within me. Something deep and primal that made me shudder at the sight of her. Something that made my blood shiver and burn for reasons I didn’t, couldn’t, understand. It was as though my body was no longer my own, as though it had become a puppet dancing on the strings of something stronger than I would ever be. Instinct drove me to fight it, to push back, to refuse to let it control me. But it was so strong. So strong. And I was not. I was weak. I always had been. And yet this...There was a strange kind of strength in this.

Elain lay on the floor only a few feet from me. She was shivering violently, dressed in nothing but a thin nightgown which was now sodden and so sheer it clung to her in ways that made modesty a thing she could only dream of. Guards that stood by the King’s thrown laughed nastily at the sight of her. She didn’t react. But something in me did.

Anger reared in me like wildfire again, burning so fiercely within me that I remembered, for just a moment, what I was. I was a High Lord’s son. I was a Prince of the Autumn Court. I had fire in my veins, ash powdering my soul and rage fuelling that brutal, ravaging power which I had suppressed for centuries. It came rushing from my core, flooding me without warning, without consent, rearing in me, a phoenix drawn from the cold, silent dust I had become.  

I didn’t know where this had come from. I didn’t know how it was possible to feel so much in this one moment for a girl I barely knew, had never even met before today. I had let myself be cowed almost my entire life by those who held my strings. I had been so empty for so long at the Spring Court that some days I wondered if I had died in my sleep and woken as a ghost, a shell of my former self and no-one noticed or cared.

 I had absorbed beatings and bone-shattering magic pulses without a whisper of thought or protest. I had deserved them, or Tamlin had needed to do it, or it had spared someone else who couldn’t have borne it as well as I. There had been so many scars peppering my body that I had never complained about the addition of a few more. Over the past few weeks I had stopped feeling even that. I didn’t understand then why I should now feel so much for Elain; why she should be the one to inspire me to fight again where everything else had only convinced me a little more that I should simply give up.

The leash around my throat burned but words found their way over it anyway, my fury rising to such a pitch that it needed some release. “ _Don’t just leave her on the damned floor-“_   I found myself snarling.

A pulse of light flared and the shackles that had bound me, had nearly broken me as I had been forced to watch the death of another innocent that I had been responsible for, that I felt such a strong desire to protect, shattered. I could feel Tamlin’s eyes on me but he remained on the floor, still bound by the King’s magic while whatever new strength flowed in me had freed me of my own restraints. I didn’t dare let myself wonder at it.

I padded across the floor towards Elain, silently daring any of the guards to come near me, to try to stop me, or to dare to touch her or even laugh at her situation again. They would die swiftly on the end of my sword and I would feel no pity for them. Not after what they had done to her.

I quickly shrugged off my coat and knelt down beside her, trying to appear as non-threatening and gentle as I could as I held it out to her, offering her some small form of comfort and warmth, the little I could give. Though she still trembled violently with cold she cringed away from me.  

That rejection, the look that had flashed in her hollow eyes for a heartbeat- of disgust and fear and something that I might have called hatred- hurt more than anything else that had ever been done to me.

 It was worse than the beatings, worse than the whipping Under the Mountain that had left me unable to move for more than a week afterwards, worse than Amarantha gouging out my eye and marking me with the hideous slash down my face with her fingernails. Pain jolted through my heart like lightning and I felt the strength that had flared in my flicker and die, like a candle kindled amidst a storm only to be snuffed out again by a gentle, thoughtless breath.

Behind us the guards had seized Nesta and were dragging her towards the Cauldron to suffer the same fate that Elain had just endured. Elain didn’t look at her sister or the fate that awaited her and a part of me wondered if she could, if she could see or hear or feel or sense anything going on around her. I recognised the look in her eyes, that hollow, shattered emptiness.

It had come to me after Nara’s death, after my father had drawn the blade across her throat and spattered her blood across the walls with brutal efficiency. It had been as though a part of me had died with her. It had been as though I had stopped existing in the world because it no longer made sense anymore and my mind had been unable to process what was happening.

I had sunk so deeply into my own shock that I had been unable to accept her death. I had held her to me as her blood soaked into my clothes as she grew steadily colder in my arms and still I had been unable to grasp what that meant. I had gently shaken her in my arms, asking her to come back to me, begging her not to leave me alone. Like a child, unable to understand the meaning of death when it was first explained to them, I had been unable to comprehend how she could just be gone.

Elain had the same look about her now. The same emptiness, the same faint tinge of horror in her eyes that was too great for her to process. She remained hunched and shuddering in exactly the same place the Cauldron had cast her. She didn’t move, she didn’t speak, she didn’t scream, she didn’t look at anything around her. She hadn’t even removed her gag.

I tried to gently coax some feeling back into her. I could feel nothing coming from her, she was unresponsive and blank. I wondered for a moment if this was perhaps deeper than her trauma. I wondered if the Cauldron had torn her spirit from her and left her an empty shell. Fear gripped me at that thought and that emboldened me. Shuffling forwards on my knees I gently wrapped my jacket around her slim, frozen form, careful not to touch her in case it made her flinch from me again, something I knew, in that cowardly part of me, that I couldn’t bear.

I listened to the sounds of Nesta being dragged towards the Cauldron even as I stayed crouched down beside Elain who remained shuddering and staring straight ahead. I didn’t know if she saw Nesta’s struggle, or the damning promise I was sure would one day return to haunt the King of Hybern for the mistake that he had made in doing this to her and her sister. I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to. These things would likely haunt her dreams until the day she did. If she ever did now that she had been made an immortal.

Once again the Cauldron tilted and without thinking, I scooped Elain into my arms and lifted her out of the way of the flood of water that swept across the floor, pitching her sister out onto the stone tiles as it had done to her minutes before. This time, Elain didn’t flinch from me, she simply lay limply in my arms until I gently set her down on her feet, keeping close to her, holding her still, afraid she would fall if left unsupported.

Despite the circumstances that had brought us so close I couldn’t help but notice that there was a terrifying rightness in the way our bodies fit together.

I was so focused on keeping her on her feet and checking to see if she was injured as she continued to stare blankly ahead of her without seeing anything that I didn’t notice Nesta until it was too late.

“ _Get off of her!_ ” she screamed as she slammed into me, tearing me away from Elain, knocking me backwards away from her.

Elain slipped against the slick floor without me to hold her but Nesta caught her and held her upright as she ran her hands over her little sister, as though searching desperately for something she could never find all the while sobbing her name over and over and over again.

I barely heard her. As she had been torn from the safety of my arms, I knew what she was. I knew why I had been able to escape the King’s power. I knew why watching Elain being forced into that Cauldron while I been held down, powerless, and did nothing, had affected me so deeply. I understood the primal stirring in my bones a moment before I felt everything snap into place.

Elain raised her head a bare inch to look over her sister’s shoulder. I seemed to be the first thing she had truly seen since being cast from the Cauldron as what she was. Nesta’s touch and horrified cries had done what I could not and had woken her somehow. And now she looked at me. Those soft, beautiful brown eyes met my own, mismatched and ruined.

No-one else in the room seemed to notice as my entire world collapsed around me. My hands went slack against my sides as I stared at her. I didn’t think I was breathing. I didn’t think I needed to breathe any more. It didn’t seem important. There was only this. Only us. Only her eyes watching me, filled with confusion and uncertainty.

And I knew. I knew in that moment that she could feel it too. The bond that had just blossomed between us like the first breath Elain had taken when she’d emerged from the Cauldron. I knew that she could feel it, that she now knew that some part of her was tied to me and she wanted to know why.

I couldn’t contain it in the face of that. She had been through so much. She had had so much ripped away from her. She had been torn apart and Made into something else, something that terrified her. And now there was this, this otherworldly bond that pulsed so strongly within her chest like a second heartbeat. I could only imagine how much it would terrify her. I could _feel_ how much it terrified her, how she needed to understand. I could give her that, I could explain this one, small part of her. And I couldn’t keep back this truth, this one truth that I should never have uttered, that one truth that might one day damn me in. It burst out of me and I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t keep it from her. I _couldn’t_. Not feeling what she felt.

My voice cracked and my eyes never once left hers as I whispered those broken, hopeless words to her, “You’re my mate.”

That was a greater travesty than anything else that had happened this night, I was sure of that. I still looked down at her, her beauty, her perfection, her gentleness obvious even in this condition. She was soft and sweet and perfect. She was everything I was not, everything I would never be. I was battered and scarred and broken. Even before I knew her, before I knew anything more than the few fragments that Feyre had told me I knew that she deserved better. I knew that this was the cruellest thing that Cauldron could ever have done to her. Bonded. She was _bonded_ to me.

Perhaps that was why I didn’t protest when Nesta turned on me, full of fury and hatred. “She is _no such thing_.” She snarled at me, fire blazing in her cold eyes as she shoved me again, trying to push me away, away from Elain, away from my mate.

My mate. My _mate_.

Elain said nothing. She just continued to stare at me, even as I stared at her, unable to look away though I knew I should. Maybe she didn’t understand what that meant. She was human after all, from what Feyre had led me to believe humans had no mating bonds. Maybe she didn’t understand the significance of what I had told her, in trying to explain what it was she might have felt between us, maybe I had only deepened her confusion.  

Or perhaps, even worse, she did understand. And she hated me for it. As her sister did. As she should.

Even so I couldn’t take my eyes from her, could barely spare a scrap of attention for what played out before me. It was wrong, I knew it was, I screamed it to myself over and over and over again but that bond wouldn’t listen. I shouldn’t stand near her, I shouldn’t want her, I shouldn’t crave her, I shouldn’t dare to touch her, to stain her with my hands, soiled with blood and shame and worse things. I should make myself move away from her, I should go to Tamlin, to my lord, to Feyre, to anyone. I shouldn’t just stay here with her.

 Yet I did. And the deep, selfish part of me purred in pleasure at this one small rebellion, the first I had dared since the return of Tamlin’s powers. He could hurt me for this, could punish me brutally for not securing his bride, for not doing more, for simply standing by and letting this unfold. I didn’t care.

Feyre ‘freed’ herself from Rhys’ clutches and begged the King to break the bond between them. With that bond burning inside me, new as it was and unaccepted by Elain, I felt myself recoil at the request. And I shivered at the thought of anyone cleaving that apart. I had seen her with him in the Illyrian Steppes and I saw her now, the way she looked to him, fleeting glances that anyone else might miss, I knew that there was so much more to this than she would have us believe.

Then Morrigan winnowed to me and the world went to hell once more. Her palm shot out and slammed into my chest, forcing me backwards and away from Feyre’s sisters, away from my mate. I howled in rage and in anguish in a roar that shook the entire hall as she was torn away from me.

That bond, that one flicker of light and life that she had somehow kindled in me where darkness had reigned for so many centuries my soul had all but forgotten what those things felt like, winked out. She was too far away, the bond too new and I couldn’t feel her anymore. She was gone. She was gone. My mate was gone. I had let them take her. I had let them take my mate away from me. I hadn’t protected her. I hadn’t saved her. I had watched and she had been taken from me. She was gone. She was _gone._ And I was becoming empty once more.

I began shaking my head, denying her being taken, denying the silence of the bond that threatened to strip me of everything, every shred of hope, every will to survive that I had managed to cling to. Panting, trying to control myself, my hands clenching and unclenching at my sides I turned to Tamlin and Feyre.

“ _Get her back,_ ” I hissed at Tamlin, ignoring the King of Hybern snarling his fury in the background.

I didn’t care what he had lost. I didn’t care about the mortal queens lining up to get made. I didn’t care about how lost Feyre looked, gazing emptily into the space where Rhys had once stood. Where her mate had once been. I knew that she felt what I felt, that hollowness, that awful silence, compounded a hundred times. And I knew that whatever love she had once felt for my High Lord was gone.

I didn’t care about that either. Not as Tamlin ignored me, dismissed me, refused to notice the agony that was tearing through me. I was struggling to breathe. I felt as though they had stuffed me into that Cauldron. I felt as though it was ripping me apart as it had ripped her apart. I felt as though its filthy black waters were stuffing themselves down my throat and into my lungs. I felt as though I was drowning and he didn’t care. He didn’t care that my mate was gone. He didn’t care that it was killing me. He didn’t care. Perhaps he never truly had.

This male had been my home. This male had been my friend and my salvation once. He had taken me in when I had been young and lost and so broken I wasn’t sure how I had ever managed to keep surviving.

  _For her_. Something deep within me whispered. The bond or just my own desperate hope I didn’t know. But I knew that it was true. I had survived for Elain. I had endured for Elain. I had continued to force myself to exist even as things became worse and worse- for her, for the part of me that knew I would one day find her. My mate. _My mate_. Who was gone. And my High Lord didn’t care.

I didn’t listen as Feyre thanked the King for breaking her bond, the last thing I felt like doing following having my mate removed from me, and as the queens began to argue about who was to be made first. I didn’t notice anything but the horrifying emptiness tunnelling into my soul until Jurian stalked towards me, smirking.

“Do you know what Illyrian bastards do to pretty females?” he demanded of me, laughing nastily under his breath, his eyes glittering with twisted, manic pleasure. “You won’t have a mate left-at least not one that’s useful to you in any way.”

The growl that rose in my chest and burst out of me was wilder and more feral than I had heard in a long time. I had shunned that part of me, those instincts, for years. I had not wanted to be out of control, responding to everything with violence the way my family had done. But for Elain. For her I would turn into a monster truly befitting a dark prince of the Autumn Court. I would do whatever I had to get her back and if they harmed her...

If they harmed her what would I do? What had I done already? _Nothing_ the voice inside my head that sounded so like my father jeered, _nothing, nothing, nothing._ What could I do against warriors thrumming with power and capable of tearing me apart with ease?

As if to quell the torrent of thoughts battering against me fire began to burn in the pit of my stomach. Fire I thought had died two hundred years ago. Fire I had never expected to feel again. And I knew, with cold, calculating certainty what I would do, what I would become. If they harmed her, if they laid so much as a finger upon my mate they would burn. There would be nothing left of them but ash.

Feyre spat at the ground at Jurian’s feet, snarling, “You can go to hell, you hideous prick.”

A flicker of the same spirit that had been in her when I had first met her. She was not afraid of Jurian, was not afraid of anything in this hall, was not afraid perhaps, of anything in this world anymore. I wondered for a moment what that might be like. But then I took her in, took in the way she glared at Jurian. There was anger in her eyes at his words, at what had happened but...But she was calm. She was too calm.

Reason returned to me as I watched her. This was the girl who had fled into the Spring Court lands in the middle of the night as a human with no training and no powers in order to protect the aging father who had done nothing for her for years. And she was standing here calmly, politely thanking the king for breaking the bond, spitting easy curses at Jurian. She should have been wild, she should have been crazed, she should feel as I did, petrified and out of control and-

She didn’t believe that her sisters were in any real danger. She believed that they were safe. She trusted them to Rhys and his Court’s care. _Care_ , not abduction. She would rather they were there than here with us. I couldn’t blame her for that after what she had suffered but...

I eyed her warily, trying to understand her, trying to see what I had seen in the Illyrian Steppes, trying to see what she had become in her time away from us. Because she had been right when she had confronted me those weeks ago. She was not the frightened human girl who had once come to us. And she was not the shattered Fae that had been saved from death and landed in a torment far worse. She was something else now. Something more. A shiver ran the length of my spine.

“We will get her back,” Feyre promised me quietly.

She at last answered my plea, the plea I had made to Tamlin, the words I doubted he had even bothered to hear. Nothing I had said for a long time had mattered to him. Especially not after my failure at the Illyrian Steppes. He had commanded me to bring her home, to bring her back to him. I had not. The scars from that punishment tingled as though in answer to the flicker of dark thought cast their way.

But I didn’t trust Feyre either. I didn’t trust her words. I didn’t trust the look that she gave me. She was too calm, too controlled, as if we were all her puppets, as if she was pulling the strings on all of us and we didn’t know it. I didn’t think she wanted me anywhere near Elain, even if she was my mate. _Especially_ if she was my mate. She thought me as worthy of her as I thought myself. And if I were her I would want me kept far away from her sweet, gentle sister.

I didn’t listen to her as she idly taunted the King of Hybern. My mind was still full of Elain. Still full of the feeling of the bond that had blossomed in my chest like new spring flowers. But as Tamlin’s power swelled, beginning to winnow us away I caught Feyre’s last words as they resonated through the hall.

“I will light your pyres myself for what you did to my sisters.”

A shiver traced its way along my bones. I was sure she did not blame only the King and the queens for her sisters’ fate. No. She blamed Tamlin and myself just as much. As she had every right to.

***

I watched Feyre carefully as she tried to mask her emotions. She was concealing them well, considering what being back here must be doing to her. Tamlin was looking at her with such love, such adoration on his face, the monster he had become these last few months bred by fear and anger and jealousy impossible to find anywhere but in the blackened shadows that lingered in his green eyes. He saw nothing. But I was well practiced in the art of concealing how I felt and I had seen it, for just a moment, before she hitched this mask back in place. She would become what Tamlin had always wanted her to be, soft and pliant, and he would never think to look past it. But beneath that...

“It feels-it feels as if some of it was a dream, or a nightmare.” She stammers, swallowing hard. “But...But I remembered you.” I had no doubt that she did. I had no doubt that she remembered him locking her away, the terror that had caused in her, the eruption of magic that had drawn Morrigan to freeing her. She remembered everything. “And when I saw you there today, I started clawing at it, fighting, because I knew it might be my only chance, and-“

I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand her lies. I couldn’t stand the way he looked at her. He had hurt her, he had hurt her so badly. But he had hurt me in the past too. And if he had looked at me the way he was now looking at Feyre I...

The words were out of my mouth before I could pull them back, interrupting the web of lies she was so carefully weaving around my High Lord’s mind and heart. “How did you break free of his control,” I asked, my voice flat and toneless.

Tamlin growled in warning at me. I tried to ignore it but some deep part of me flinched at the sound. I had to fight to stop myself from taking a step backwards away from him as my instincts hissed about danger. But no. Not now. Not in front of Feyre. He always kept more control around her, not wanting her to frighten her he had insisted. Not wanting to show her how brutal he could truly be, wanting to keep her ignorant of that side of him.

Feyre was eyeing me, looking me up and down, weighing, assessing, calculating. She had changed so much since leaving us. A part of me, buried deep, whispered that it was good. She was strong again, there was light in her eyes and flesh on her bones again and she looked...good. But I knew what that would mean for me, for this court. Tamlin was a bad lord but these people...these people had suffered enough and I had sworn to protect them. I knew as I looked into Feyre’s eyes that I now had to protect them from her. It hurt more than it should have. I hadn’t thought anything still had the potential to affect me in that way.

“I wanted it-I don’t know how. I just wanted to break free of him, so I did.”

It was a pathetic lie, a pathetic explanation for doing what should have been impossible. Rhysand was the most powerful High Lord in Prythian’s history. This wasn’t good enough. She seemed to know it. She had a lot to learn about this game that she was playing. It was dangerous, so dangerous. I wondered if she knew just how much. I wondered if she knew what the consequences would be when Tamlin learned the truth. I wondered if she knew who would be caught in the crossfire of her actions. Then I wondered if she cared.

Tamlin prevented me from speaking again by intervening first, lightly brushing her shoulder, “Are-are you hurt?”  

I felt myself tense in spite of myself and my growing certainty that Feyre was playing Tamlin like a fiddle. Even though I wasn’t sure if I could believe that that had happened the mere thought of it... The Court of Nightmares was brutal and harrowing. I had recoiled each and every time Tamlin had sent me there to treat with them. It always took me days of solitude in the fresh spring woods to recover from the horrors of what I had seen there. But for Rhys to actually be capable of doing that to her...

“I-I don’t know,” she stammered. “I don’t...I don’t remember those things.”

I frowned at her, metal eye narrowing. The more she spoke the more my mind cleared after losing Elain. _Elain_. My heart ached in my chest, seeking her, seeking the bond, trying to tug it, trying to reach her. But I had no idea what I was doing, I was clumsy and weak and looking for it was like searching a vast, blackened forest for a single match to light the way. Focusing myself on Feyre once more I considered. She was lying. I knew it with the certainty of truth. She was lying to his face and I knew it. I couldn’t believe that he didn’t.

Feyre looked up at Tamlin, sensing apparently that she had to steer the conversation to other places before she was discovered. She brushed a hand over his lips. “You’re real,” she whispered, her eyes glittering. I could see her scrambling for a thread of the love she had once felt for him, to remind herself of it so she could fool him once more. But it wasn’t real. None of this was real. “You freed me.”

Her fingers clenched just slightly and I wondered for a moment if she might try and gouge his eyes out. I remembered her parting words to the King of Hybern. She had not forgotten Tamlin’s part in that horror show. Or my own.

“You freed yourself,” Tamlin murmured back. Drawing himself up he motioned back towards the house, “Rest-and then we’ll talk.” He told her gently. I knew she would do no such thing. I knew the moment she was alone she would begin scheming, she would put that sharp, swift mind of hers to work on fooling Tamlin further, creating and practicing and polishing better lies with which to convince him.

Before I could think what to do with that knowledge however, Tamlin continued and tore me away from those thoughts. “I...need to find Ianthe. And make some things very, very clear.”  

Just the sound of her name made my muscles lock up in protest. Yes he would make things clear, would make it obvious that he no longer had any need of her warming his bed. I felt nausea rising in me at the thought that she might once again come crawling back to me now that the High Lord was no longer available. She would settle for second prize. I couldn’t stand the thought of her watching my every move again, trying to seduce me. I couldn’t bear the thought of her touching me, kissing me-

I forced myself to focus on the sound of Feyre’s voice as she spoke again, her words soft and tremulous. Just what Tamlin had always wanted from her. He would think her broken again after her time with Rhys at the Night Court. He would think her like the frail human he had once rescued, traumatised and in need of his devoted care and protection. He would think her easy to control. He was wrong. Feyre would never again be controlled by him. I knew that.

“I-I want to be a part of it this time,” she said, planting herself firmly on the path and refusing to move as Tamlin attempted to usher her soothingly back towards the mansion. “No more...No more shutting me out. No more guards. Please.” No, because guards would make it difficult to look around, to gather information, to spy as I was now sure she intended to do.

 “I have so much to tell you about them-bits and pieces but...” Yes she would have so much to tell him. So many carefully crafted lies that she knew he would eat right out of her hand.

 “I can help,” she insisted. She probably could have done. She could have been such an asset to this court. She could have helped us rebuild things, she could have helped these people she would now bring war to. Instead she would burn this court to ash and bring its High Lord to his knees for what he had done to her. And she would have every right to.

“We can get my sisters back. Let me help.”

At that I felt my heart lurch. Her sisters. Elain. My mate. What had I done? What had I done when I had blurted out those words? They echoed now in my head over and over and over again _you’re my mate, you’re my mate, you’re my mate._ I had doomed myself. I had handed the greatest weapon anyone could ever have over me to my enemies. And I knew she would use it against me. I had been a fool. I had been such a fool and I should have known better.

 I should have learned when my father slaughtered Nara for the crime of falling in love with me. I should have learned long ago the lesson this world kept trying to teach me: that the things I loved would never be anything other than a weapon to use against me, another string tied to me to yank on and make me do as I was commanded.

“We’ll start over.” Tamlin promised her, nodding and my heart sank. “Do things different. When you were gone, I realised...I’d been wrong. So wrong, Feyre. And I’m sorry.”

 It was an effort not to snort in disbelief as I remembered those months of chaos. He had neglected his people, the people who needed and relied on him, he had torn the mansion apart and terrified everyone inside it because of how he had let her go. He had allied himself with a madman and facilitated a war and now he told her that he had learned, that he was sorry. I wondered if perhaps he deserved to be lied to if these were the lies he would tell her in turn.

“It doesn’t matter.” Feyre cooed, “I’m home now.”

“Forever,” he growled and despite my earlier flash of anger I couldn’t help but pity him. He had been a good male once, a good friend he had just been broken by the things that had happened. Maybe he deserved this for all he had done to Feyre but...

“Forever,” Feyre repeated sweetly, interrupting my rattled, confused thoughts. I didn’t know what was right. I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know what to do.

Feyre turned back to me to where I remained rooted to the spot on the gravel drive. I didn’t bother to try and put a mask over my face. I let her see the hardness there. I wouldn’t let her bring war to this court, to its people. I wouldn’t let her turn Spring into a playground for the Night Court’s monsters. No matter what had happened to Tam this place was my home and these people...They were my responsibility as well. I wouldn’t fail them as he had; as I had failed him.

But as Feyre gave me a sweet smile my heart clenched so hard I swear it stopped. She knew of Elain. And I knew, somewhere deep within me, that she knew where she was. She would keep me from her, would protect her from me. And she should. She should. But to never see her again. To never know she was safe. To never be near her again...That might kill me.

I clung desperately to the scraps of memories that I had of her as Feyre swept up the marble stairs to the manor’s front doors beside Tamlin. The way she had looked. The way she had smelled. The sound of her voice. The feel of her body melding itself against mine.

I closed my eyes and there, within the haunting darkness that had been my constant companion over the centuries I felt it. The bond was still there between us. It was faint and quiet but it was there. I nearly sank to my knees with relief. She was alive. She was alive. She was out there somewhere.

I raised my head and looked to where Feyre was disappearing inside the manor. Her eyes locked on mine once more. I stared her down, giving nothing away until she slipped inside again. Then I did sink down to my knees, closing my eyes again and breathing deeply. I whispered a soft prayer to the Mother then rose again, determined.

Gently as I could, I tugged on the bond. I could have sworn that I felt it flutter in response.

_I will see you again_. I promised her.

Then I followed Feyre up the stairs and into the cool mansion, thinking, calculating. No matter how much had changed in the months she had been gone from this court, Feyre remained a huntress. A huntress who had marked Tamlin out as her prey. And so our game began.

****

 

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of fell out of the whole writing thing so this might be a tad rusty. Feedback would be very much appreciated to try and fuel some more scribblings if you have a moment. I do miss it.


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